Two Girls Down Review

As addictive, cinematic, and binge-worthy a narrative as The Wire and The Killing, Two Girls Down introduces Louisa Luna as a thriller writer of immense talent and verve.

When two young sisters disappear from a strip mall parking lot in a small Pennsylvania town, their devastated mother hires an enigmatic bounty hunter, Alice Vega, to help find the girls. Immediately shut out by a local police department already stretched thin by budget cuts and the growing OxyContin and meth epidemic, Vega enlists the help of a disgraced former cop, Max Caplan. Cap is a man trying to put the scandal of his past behind him and move on, but Vega needs his help to find the girls, and she will not be denied.

With little to go on, Vega and Cap will go to extraordinary lengths to untangle a dangerous web of lies, false leads, and complex relationships to find the girls before time runs out, and they are gone forever.

About: Two Girls Down is a mystery thriller written by Louisa Luna. It will be published on 1/9/2018 by Doubleday, an imprint of Random House, 320 pages. The genres are mystery, thriller, crime, and fiction. Please see below for more information about the author.

My Experience: I started reading Two Girls Down on 12/19/17 and finished it on 12/28/17. I love the start. I read this book during my Christmas travel and sometimes only read snippets of it so I didn’t fully enjoy the read as much as I normally would. I would have loved it if Cap caught some interesting cheaters. The one he caught is so mellow. I do like Vega’s contact “the Bastard” though it would have been great if he’s in the story a bit more. I would love to follow his train of thoughts while he digs around for info. He seems to have a good sense of humor. I like getting to know of the bounty hunter/private investigator profession reading this book.

This book is told in the third person point of view following Jamie Brandt, a single mother of two girls: Kylie 10 and Bailey 8, both went missing while she’s inside the store buying a birthday gift for Kylie’s friend. The story also introduces Max Caplan (Cap), an ex-cop and a current private investigator concerning on catching cheaters for a price. He’s a single dad to a teenage daughter Nell. The third main character is Alice Vega, 33, a bounty hunter specializing on finding missing persons. She doesn’t work with the police unless they want to. She was hired by Jamie’s aunt to find Jamie’s missing daughters. The grief a mom goes through while waiting for news of her daughters is tough. Alice hires Max to help her with the case. They both follow clues that leads to more clues to find the Brandt girls, though often they find more than they were looking for.

This book is well written. It keeps me wanting more and it’s intense at times. The story involves children but foul language and extreme content are in it. The boy in the tank freak me out. I have a love and hate relationship with Vega and Cap. Their mysterious background is not very interesting to read for me, but I do like them doing detective work and chasing after clues. The romance is slow which is good but then it came and it was so sudden and without any passion. There are so many characters in this book so I would recommend if you read, to read it within 3 days so you won’t lose track of who’s who. I lost track of them since I was only able to read a little each day. I love books with clues leading to another clues and though, most of the suspects it points to are troubled individuals that could be predictable, it’s still a great read and I do recommend everyone to read this book! As always, I can’t never guess the ending and this book didn’t fail to surprise me.

Louisa Luna is the author of the novels Brave New Girl, Crooked, and Serious As A Heart Attack. She was born and raised in the city of San Francisco and lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter. (Photo obtained from Goodreads and info obtained from Penguin Random House).

***Disclaimer: Many thanks to the author Louisa Luna, publisher Doubleday, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review. Please be assured that my opinions are honest.

4 thoughts on “Two Girls Down Review”

Both are pretty cool series to check out, especially the killing 😀😀But true, reading especially last year was really a bit of problem for me. This year I want to focus a bit more on reading books as well 😊

Sounds like a terrific read (I love the fact that the synopsis refers to both The Wire and The Killing, both great that I really love).
I don’t usually like books that have loads of characters that are hard to keep track of, but the story sounds so interesting that I might give this a go at one point. Thanks for yet another great review 😊

About Me

Hi! Thanks for taking the time to read about me. I create this blog to gush over books I love and to connect with other book lovers. As always, too many books, too little time. Time need to freeze so that I can read more books! :-)